puerile

Etymology

From Latin puerīlis (“childish”), from puer (“child, boy”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈpjʊə.ɹaɪl/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈpjʊɹɪl/, /ˈpjʊɹaɪl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Adjective

puerile (comparative more puerile, superlative most puerile)

1. Characteristic of, or pertaining to, a boy or boys; confer: puellile.
2. Childish; trifling; silly.
   • (Can we date this quote?) De Quincey:

     The French have been notorious through generations for their puerile affectation of Roman forms, models, and historic precedents.

   • 1927, Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, page 79:

     From the table he had received the gout; from the alcove a tendency to convulsions; from the grandeeship a pride so vast and puerile that he seldom heard anything that was said to him and talked to the ceiling in a perpetual monologue; from the exile, oceans of boredom, a boredom so persuasive that it was like pain,—he woke up with it and spent the day with it, and it sat by his bed all night watching his sleep.

   • 2014 April 12, Simon Russell Beale, “Why Shakespeare always says something new: As the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth approaches, the great Shakespearean actor Simon Russell Beale explains his secrets [print version: The king and I]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review)‎, London, page R7:

     […] I have always found it hard that Hamlet, a character that I love and admire, is guilty of a puerile misogyny and, perhaps, more worryingly, of the unnecessary deaths of his old friends from university, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Adjective

puerile

1. inflected form of pueril

Etymology

From Latin puerīlis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pweˈri.le/

Adjective

puerile (masculine and feminine plural puerili)

1. puerile, childish, juvenile, boyish
2. (rare) children's (attribute), baby (attribute)

Anagrams

• pelurie

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /pu.eˈriː.le/, [pʊ.ɛˈriː.ɫɛ]

Adjective

puerīle

1. nominative neuter singular of puerīlis
2. accusative neuter singular of puerīlis
3. vocative neuter singular of puerīlis

References

• puerile in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)